“I tried to use the shoes,” I gasped. “But they’re still connected to Dorothy. She knows where we are now. She’s on her way.”
“We have to warn the Quadrant,” Nox said urgently. I looked up. Glinda and Glamora were still going at it. Glinda’s hair had come loose from its bun and surrounded her head in a wild halo. Her armor was rent in a dozen places, and her face and hands were smeared with blood. But Glamora wasn’t looking much better. Her amethyst form was chipped and cracked, and though both of them were still flying at each other, she held one arm close to her chest as though she couldn’t move it. I could see flashes of power as Mombi and Gert fought on the ground, but like Nox and me, they were surrounded. The ground was littered with the broken and bloody bodies of Glinda’s soldiers and the air smelled like blood and the electric haze of spent magic. I couldn’t see Melindra or Annabel or any of the other Wicked. None of us could hold out for much longer. If we didn’t do something soon, all of us were going to go down fighting for Oz right here.
Suddenly, a terrifying howl split the air. Pete’s face went white. I turned to see what he was looking at. “Oh no,” I said. Beside me, Nox drew his breath in sharply.
Dorothy had found us.
She wasn’t alone.
TWENTY-TWO
Dorothy looked even worse than she had when I’d seen her in Kansas, as though she couldn’t suck magic out of the ground fast enough to keep herself going. Her dress was still in tatters, and she’d painted on her maniacal smile with a garish red lipstick that looked like a bloody slash across her face. Her shoes blazed with red light. But she wasn’t the scariest thing we faced anymore—not by a long shot. That honor fell to her steed: a three-headed monster the size of a truck. It was covered in sharp-edged, reptilian scales. Behind it swung a long tail crowned in a bristle of spikes. Its legs ended in paws with huge, serrated claws. The teeth in each of its three mouths were as long as my forearm. It threw back first one head, then another, and then a third, and roared. And then I spotted a red velveteen ribbon around each of its thick, muscular necks.
“Oh my god,” I gasped. “That’s Toto.” That is, something that had once been Toto. But this Toto was like the ’roid-rage version of Dorothy’s little dog, twisted and terrifying.
At Dorothy’s back was yet another army—this one made up of the Tin Man’s gruesome hybrid creations. Creatures lurched and hopped, brandishing arms and legs that ended in spikes and saws and pincers. Some rolled along on bicycle wheels. Others bounded on all fours, but their bodies were replaced by metal torsos. Most of them looked like they’d been pieced together in a hurry. Bloody wounds seeped fluid where jagged metal edges met living flesh, and some of them limped or dragged themselves along, their blank faces showing no sign that they were in pain but the trail of blood they left behind them suggesting otherwise.
Dorothy, seated astride Toto’s broad back, laughed out loud. “Did you miss me?” she called. “It’s so good to see you again, Amy. All my old friends in one place.” Her eyes flicked upward to Glinda and Glamora, who’d paused their battle and hung there watching her.
“Dorothy,” Glinda called. I thought I heard a hint of panic in her voice. She hadn’t expected Dorothy to find us so quickly. She was hoping she could take us out first, I realized. Glinda wasn’t strong enough to face the Wicked and Dorothy at the same time.
“I’m so disappointed to see your army here,” Dorothy said. “It’s like you’re going behind my back, Glinda, and you know I just hate secrets, unless they belong to me.”
“Dorothy, you misunderstand—” Glinda began, but before the words were out of her mouth Dorothy pointed her fingers and shot a fireball directly at the hovering witch. Glinda spun and dodged, her wand at the ready.
“No, I don’t think I do,” Dorothy said coldly. “I’m the Queen of Oz, Glinda, have you forgotten? Any army that acts without my command is acting against me. And you know what I do to traitors.”
Toto snarled, rearing on his scale-plated hind legs as his huge claws dug into the earth. “Forward!” Dorothy screamed, and her army surged ahead to meet Glinda’s. Dorothy’s awful zombie-like soldiers cut and hacked mechanically at the mass of identical girls. They might look bedraggled, but they were terrifying. Dead-eyed and robotic, they kept swinging even as Glinda’s soldiers cut them into pieces. I watched in horror as a girl beheaded one of Dorothy’s minions. The creature’s body advanced relentlessly, chopping away with paws that ended in a bristle of jagged, rusty knives. I turned my head away, not wanting to see the rest.
For the moment, the four of us were sheltered by the rock that had hidden Pete and Ozma, but it was only a matter of seconds before both armies tore us apart. There were too many of them for Nox and me to possibly be able to fight off.
Toto reared against his leash and landed with a thump that shook the ground. Dorothy was almost on top of us. Without thinking, I grabbed Nox’s hand, and his fingers tightened around mine. “Amy,” he said, low and urgent. “I just want you to know—I mean, I want you to understand that I . . .” His voice caught and my eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save Oz.”
He drew me to him so tightly it knocked the wind out of me. “I’m sorry, too,” he said, and then he kissed me in a way that made my knees buckle until I kissed him back even harder. A kiss about the end of the world. A kiss that said good-bye, and I’m sorry, and I wish things could have been different. A kiss full of longing for the life we’d never have together, the things we’d never know about each other. But it wasn’t long enough; it couldn’t be. We were about to die.
Nox broke away and I raised my knife as Glinda’s soldiers surged around us.
“Loooooo!” Ozma trilled next to my ear, tugging at my sleeve, and I jumped back. “Looo looo looo!” she said eagerly.
I didn’t have time to figure out what Ozma wanted. The girl soldier nearest me raised her spear and I brought up my knife to deflect it. And then her piercing howl of triumph ended in a scream as a mass of something sticky, flaming, and unbelievably foul-smelling hit her squarely in the face.
“What the—” Pete began.
“LOOO!” Ozma shouted, pointing upward. We all looked, not understanding what we were seeing, until Nox whooped aloud as comprehension dawned.
“The monkeys!” he cried. “It’s the monkeys!”
“LULU!” Ozma shouted in joy as the monkeys descended.
TWENTY-THREE
“That’s right, little miss!” Lulu bellowed, lobbing another ball of the mystery flaming goop at a soldier with a tiny catapult and flapping down to land next to us. “Never send a human to do a monkey’s job. It’s what I’ve been saying for years, but does anyone listen to me? Of course not.” She was dressed in a dapper military uniform, complete with an admiral’s stars pinned to the breast, and a little leather flight cap. Her wings were made out of an elaborate combination of wire, leather, and string. Monkeys—both winged and Wingless Ones wearing homemade wings like Lulu’s—were landing all around us, fighting to clear a space. Toto’s three heads whipped around as he snapped at the monkeys in midair. Glamora was clutching a bright pink crossbow, firing bolts that trailed pink flames at her sister as Glinda struggled to get out of the way and simultaneously fight off a flock of the beastly attackers.
I was so glad to see the monkeys that I almost grabbed Lulu and hugged her, but there wasn’t time for rejoicing. “Can you get Pete and Ozma back to the castle?” I asked. With a nod, Lulu barked an order, and several monkeys detached from their formation and hoisted Pete and Ozma into the air like baggage. Ozma kicked her feet delightedly as the monkeys carried them over Dorothy’s and Glinda’s troops. Lulu covered them from the ground, catapulting wads of the monkeys’ fiery weapon at Glinda’s soldiers. “What is that stuff?” I yelled over the noise of the battle.